Mother prosecuted for school application fraud

A mother denied lying about her address to secure a place for her son at a popular primary school yesterday, in what lawyers said was a test court case.

Mrinal Patel, 41, is thought to be the first parent in the country to be taken to court for school application fraud.

Patel, who has three children, and works for a bank, appeared at Harrow magistrates court, north London, accused of fraud by false representation.

Abigail Smith, representing Harrow council, told the court it is alleged that Patel applied for a place at Pinner Park first school for her five-year-old son, Rhys, using her mother’s address in January last year.

But council investigators found tax records placed her at a different residential address, two miles away from the popular school.

You couldn’t make it up, could you?

Since when is caring for your son’s education a crime?

Probably half of our politicians have been leeching from the taxpayer, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of pounds – very likely fraudulently.

Isn’t it astonishing that the likes of Darling, Blears, McNulty, Jackboot, Purnell and others have yet to have their collars felt and yet one or more of them is almost certainly guilty under the fraud and theft acts? And yet they remain in positions of power

If the powers that be see fit to prosecute Mrinal Patel for trying to get her son into the school of her choice, then the theiving troughers in the government should be prosecuted; there cannot be one law for the plebs and another for the ruling ‘elite’.

The ruling elites are getting dangerously close to triggering a reaction approaching that caused by Ceauşescu’s despotic rule.

Roger Wardle former head of the Serious Fraud Office, on possible charges against MPs: